Sunday service with Guest Speaker Prof. Peter Cole

Living in a largely ahistorical society contributes to the persistence of racism in America. In Chicago, for instance, shockingly few people know of the city’s worst incident of racial violence, the 1919 Chicago Race Riot, in which 38 people were killed and 537 injured. Fewer know it played a major role in the segregation that still defines the city. Lack of awareness makes it easier to deny this legacy but moving towards equity demands learning and embracing painful historical truths. The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project (CRR19) seeks to educate about this history and legacy through public art and other means.

Prof. Peter Cole (he/him), founder and codirector of CRR19, is a professor of history at Western Illinois University and a research associate in the Society, Work and Development Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. Cole is the author of the award-winning Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area and Wobblies on the Waterfront: Interracial Unionism in Progressive-Era Philadelphia. He has also edited Ben Fletcher: The Life and Times of a Black Wobbly and co-edited Wobblies of the World: A Global History of the IWW.